my place--I
sometimes put "Park" after it; but the lawn is now in turnips, and not
the least like Blenheim,) and his wife, and his two daughters, and his
little boy--in fact, the whole family; and though, I confess, they were
always most friendly and attentive to _me_, their principal cares were
bestowed on Martha Brown. I never push myself where I perceive my
company is not greatly desired; so I went out to see the planting, or
thin the copses, or make new fences, or superintend the ploughing, or
betook myself to my study, and gave full way to the wildest flights of
fancy in my everlasting first chapters of a novel or romance.

Sir,--It was at that time--now nearly four years ago--that I began a
work which I don't believe the most hostile criticism--but I will not
boast; it will be enough to say that I consider it equal to any two
introductory chapters I ever read. The whole of the first consists in a
description of my own house--the name of course changed, and the
locality removed to another county. I give the number of the rooms, the
width of the passages, the height of ceilings, and a description of the
new lifting-hinges to the dining-room door, that raise it over the
turkey carpet, without sacrificing, as is usual, an inch of the lower
part, and leaving a great interval at the sill. The fields are also very
particularly described, and in some instances the exact measurement
given; it gives such an appearance of reality, as may be seen in
Ainsworth and others; and the second chapter is devoted, or meant to be
devoted, to the living interests of the story--the _dramatis personae_,
as it were--with hopes, fears, griefs, and the other passions alluded to
in Collins's ode.

Mystery has an indescribable charm, which is the thing that makes me so
fond of riddles; and so I determined to have a hero or a heroine, I did
not care which, of a most unexampled kind. But how to invent an
unexampled hero, I could not imagine. Some disgusting fellow had always
done it before: even a blackamoor had been taken up--for there was that
horrid Othello; a Jew--there was Sheva; a puppy--there was Pelham; a
pickpocket--there was Jack Sheppard; and at last, as the sweet source of
mystery, and the pleasantest one to unravel, I thought I would take
myself. Yes, I would be the hero of my own book; and as to a heroine,
why, one of the Misses Morgan, or Martha Brown, or old Mrs Morgan, or
the Indian nurse, (whose name was Ayah, which is Sanscr